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Accolades

“This is good news for Massachusetts wine enthusiasts, who will now be able to purchase wines they currently don’t have access to,” said Robert Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine. “This is also good news for Massachusetts in general since it will mean new revenues.”

"Robert P. Dwyer of Wellesley, who blogs about wine at thewww.wellesleywinepress.com, calls the state’s liquor laws bizarre and favors a wider availability of wine. For consumers, it would be more convenient to be able to buy wine at a supermarket while shopping for food, he said."

“You have this strange exclusion of wine, which in Europe is considered a grocery item,” said Mr. Dwyer. “Here it’s considered the demon rum.”

"trying to predict the annual Wine of the Year is a popular parlor game among enophiles. This year, blogger Wellesley Wine Press held a contest, with New York wine retailer Grapes the Wine Co. awarding a prize of a Kindle Fire e-reader to the first commenter to correctly guess this year's top wine before it was announced. Unfiltered was impressed with the number of Top 10 wines prognosticated by Wellesley's readers. "Senelwine" guessed Château de St.-Cosme Gigondas 2009, our No. 10 wine, "Mike M" guessed Quinta do Vallado Touriga Nacional Douro 2008, our No. 7 wine, "James Z" guessed Baer Ursa Columbia Valley 2008, our No. 6 wine, and "RichardPF" nailed it, winning the Kindle, and the respect of his wine-loving peers. Looks like Wellesley's readers know their wine."

The Chicago Tribune's Bill Daley mentioned the site in Rosé: A wine for more seasons. I said "For me, they're like pumpkin spice coffee drinks: best enjoyed early in the season". Bill alsogave the site a shout-out for a piece the Capitol Case Clubcontributed about restaurant wine service. I thought it was a great example of how print wine writers can effectively engage wine bloggers.

The Boston Globe's website has been linking to my recent entries as part of their expanded local coverage includingWellesley. I truly appreciate that as it has driven a lot of local traffic to this site.

It was really nice of Thomas Matthews, Executive Editor of Wine Spectator to leave a comment and then check back and answer some questions I had. Awesome guy! Check it out here. And here.

Thanks to The Boston Globe for including The Wellesley Wine Press in their list of local blogs in the Food & Drink section. Check it out here.

The Wellesley Wine Press was just added tohttp://wine.alltop.com. Alltop is an interesting topical take on sorting through the best sites on the Internet- check it out and see which sites are listed for topics you're most interested in.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Some really cool fellow wine bloggers have gotten together and have done a mash-up of March Madness and wine. The result? Grape Madness! Head on over to check out the bracketed head-to-head competition they've set up and submit your entry by the end of the day Wednesday March 18th, 2009.

I like this contest for these reasons:

The guys running it are some of my favorite wine bloggers on the Internet.

I love the angle of having the brackets based on stores. We can talk all we want about specific wines, but at the end of the day we have to buy wines somewhere. That additional piece of intrigue adds to the interest of the competition: Which store will produce the winning wine?

It's always fun to mix sports and wine. For me, hunting for wines has so many parallels to collecting baseball cards it's ridiculous.

My only questions is this: Where's the Costco bracket? Maybe next year.

I'm taking the Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cab to go all the way. What else would I pick? I'm a huge fan of Columbia Crest and especially their Grand Estates line. For me, it's an easy to remember, readily available, consistent label (across many varietals I might add) that always produces value.

Question of the Day: What's your pick to win? Which store and which wine?